Dear Reader,

Welcome to Issue 31.

Where will our writers take us in this issue? The destinations are far-ranging: Prague, Marrakech, London, China, Chicago, New York, Iowa and elsewhere. Our thirty-first issue is published at a time when we are asking ourselves whether it is safe to travel, whether we should wear a surgical mask in public, and for some of us, whether we should venture beyond the confines of our own homes. Undoubtedly, the outbreak of the coronavirus poses a significant and currently unquantifiable threat to society. Yet, the media also competes for our attention by feeding us minute-by-minute information that stokes our worst fears. It convinces us that we need to wait in anxiety for every breaking development – and that this level of hyperawareness will somehow play a role in saving our lives. Directives regarding hygiene may do just that. But tabloid doom-mongering sensationalising “The Point of No Return” does little other than drain our morale. I often wonder how those who are struggling with mental illnesses such as panic disorders and agoraphobia cope with the media pumping us with the idea that the world outside our front doors is unsafe? The coronavirus outbreak is a threat to our physical health, but the way it is reported may have far reaching implications regarding our mental well-being. I’m not suggesting tune out completely; but take a break from the news from time to time – every corporation has financial motives for keeping us hooked. Instead, read a book, listen to some music – think about the good things in life.  Come the launch of our summer issue, I hope that the world is in a better place, and that we all have our health and our freedom.

Finally, I would like to extend my gratitude to those of you who clicked the donate button on our main page. StepAway Magazine would not exist without your generosity.

Now it is only fair that I let the work of our talented writers speak for itself. Enjoy reading.

Yours faithfully,

Darren Richard Carlaw

editor@stepawaymagazine.com

iced, while along Charles Bridge your sacred
personages stand balustraded.
A statue of Madonna attending to St. Bernard;

a statue of the Holy Saviour; a Statue
of the Lamentation of Christ.  So many saints
I confess to not knowing their names

or studying their deeds – though
I’ve crossed from Old Town to Lesser Quarter
and back, a played-out chodec, gazing

sunburnt for the lack of a July hat.
But now it’s snowy December, and as skaters
wave, veer, huddle in little groups,

I collapse in sludge while agreeing
with myself that nature never will resurrect us
after we are done and dusted.

Above my head, the metal and stone
remembrances – out of good faith or gratitude
struck – stare into distance

as though some higher power still fuels
their vision here.  Arse-drenchings
my own lot, yet I am thankful simply to exist,

neither buried nor elevated, taking
my treats and discomforts at ground level,
while icicles dangling from the robes,

hands and noses of the monumented ones
imply that, even in afterglow
or after-echo of their lives, they must undergo

demeanings, serve as conveniences
for crows, whistling instruments of the wind
that blusters little rushes of slush

along the scuffed ice rink of the river.
A world of fragility and flaw, strung from street
to bridge, bridge to tower, as now

a young man beside me leans
forward into symmetrical stillness, his chin
touching the pavement, his hands joined,

his whole body stretched, prostrated,
pressed, making an art of poverty and prayer.
Of alms-seeking too, as the nest

of his cap at his fingertip attests.
Saint or chancer?  Maybe both, but invisible
in the way we feel compelled

to ignore him, look elsewhere, upholster
our own vague, interminable want.
And there they are, the plentiful lures,

shimmer-snakes of tinsel, gift-windowed
shopfronts, Christmas markets
glittering under pearly-white canopied beads

of fairy lights, Gothic spires and cathedral
abutments with their stand-alone
serrations darkening into evening, red roofs

turned to smudged maroon.
A teeter of potentials, the guardian gargoyles
copper-fastening all as they forever

tilt towards us, forever stay put,
growl in silence, stick their rude tongues out,
chortle water on the passing populace.

Patrick Deeley

the women might have been
the girls I saw beside the Seine
one summer, back in seventy-nine,
dark heads bent over tables -
“tarblers” we were taught in school -
discussing everything and smoking,
gorgeous, yes, at seventeen.

And here again,
with partners at a later age
the women, younger, self-aware,
a Catholic strain of discipline
in their familiar, Gallic way
and talk, talk, talk,
I’m pleased to see they all hold
cigarettes.
Living it up, in old Maroc,
a stone’s throw from the desert.

Dominic James

In a Chinese poem written three thousand
years ago, a husband watches his wife
enter a field of grain. I can see it.
I remember reading it. She walking,
he observing, he jotting it down.
In this, there is no something, no always,
no has to, no next.

The artist who made up Bernard on
Shaftesbury Avenue and gave him words
is with me this evening. Every phrase she writes
prompts its opposite, of itself, unwritten.
So she is one with the Chinese poet
of three thousand years ago and I
am no longer in a hurry.

Richard W. Halperin

–Cino da Pistoia, friend of Dante*
1270-1336

City of bells, keeper of secrets,
cobblestoned passageways
leading back to forgotten centuries.

ꬸ

Walking from Convento di Giaccherino—
air feather soft,
gardens abloom,

Along the steep orchard path
on the Way of the Cross—
past fourteen tabernacles renewed in 1630.

This way, the altars call,
this way to heaven as chimes toll from towers below,
belfries on every corner of every block

Ring out the hours,
as I peer through rusted keyholes
revealing courtyards, labyrinths, frescoed vaults.

ꬸ

Church candles flicker
above ancient, echoing tiles—
prayers flutter skyward on swallow’s wings.

Hope and longing rise
above green-shuttered windows, red tiled roofs,
Romanesque Duomo.

City of artists, priests,
poets, princes, creators—
builders, planters, teachers.

From the convent hill,
Pistoia smiles—finer than Firenze
shimmering in the distance—

Fortressed, sun gilded
a tapestry
of the ages.

ꬸ

City of bells,
city of dreams.

Home.

*An anthology of Italian poems 13^th-19th century selected & translated by Lorna de Lucchi, 1922

Gina Williams

rough voices echo
hoarse with life – drone deep
beneath children’s descant notes

trundled wheelie-bins
thud and throb across cracks
in back-alley paving stones

grins of young and old
rise to laughter
shrieks curve up
and freak screeching gulls

whilst white feathers float down
tickle babies’ nostrils
provoke surprised sneezes
responsive mothers’ hands extend
chuck soft cheeks

stilettos tap and tip unsteady gaits
when heels clip cobblestones

disparate footfalls pound beats

rhymes united to city rhythms
this dusty summer’s day
all life is here

Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon

The pub has seats outside, where locals
pass sweary judgement on passers-by.
Hungry, we swallow our pride, sidle past
six tables of drunk women and dazed toddlers
trading insults on the pretext of a baby shower.

Lunch comes to £28.60, but
Oh, our card machine’s bust,
there’s a hole in the wall three doors down.

After, we buy paperbacks in charity shops,
get back to the car just before our three hours are up.
Unlikely to return, we take a last look at the town,
gawp at its residents, a lost, forgotten tribe
who have clung here like moss for centuries,
in a place where nothing ever happened.

Ben Banyard

By the sun I know the stairs from the street
face north. I go up, mote rising through slanted
light, through the door that locks the City out.
Into the darksome hush. I do not disturb the pods
each tethered to a different zero point. I go up

one flight, then two. Here the path turns east
then south again from the old Hasidic fellow’s
room with blackout curtains who sits at his table,
white beard guarding his chest, reading scripture
by candlelight in the afternoon, past the shared

bathroom, toward the kitchen at the end of the hall.
Halfway down I stop, turn west, insert the key into
the lock and open the door to my room. Window
facing North Dakota a hundred years ago. Single
bed in the south and east corner. Table and chair

at the foot. I sit to write then lower my forehead
to the cool green formica. In the whereabouts,
bed spring frenzy thumps and growls startle then
succumb again to silence. A hand makes its way
back to smooth the hair from my face. The other

remains on the edge, absorbing the petulant reds.
We are bound by a mutual debt, these hands and I.
They are here with me now, inexplicable portend,
old friends tracing the cyan forms hovering between
us, past and future working out the difference.

Asha Anderson

Deli, Saints Rest on Broad, McNally’s where
I bought several bottles of San Pellegrino.
We laughed on the terrace at the Phoenix
Café, devoured flourless chocolate cake,

jazz wafting from the park as we sipped red
wine in the wildflowers. Still tipsy, we
strolled Grinnell, then trekked north to pluck pears
on the farm.  You told me the story of

its conversion, to a beetle infested
studio where we worked all week─me typing
in an antique yellow chair, you crafting
a card for a friend.  You liked my expression

very satisfying. At least we agreed then.

Laura Sweeney

hold yesterday’s news under your arm as we
catch today’s news in our cars. Now we read your
papers on our phones and yet, you stand as you
have done for over thirty years; more than a
paper man – a tyre changer, a vigilant sentry for
children and old people on a busy road; your
seller’s call as anachronistic as the town crier. Hold

fast, kind paper man, as you battle the death rattle of
newsprint; a resounding obituary to
yesterday.

Berni Dwan